Gone
by planet p
Summary: Jarod goes visiting.


**Gone** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

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The woman's name was Frost. She wore a sleeveless yellow dress and white high heels. Amelia Frost, Lia. The two children, a boy and a girl, twelve years old, were twins. Nansen and Clem, short for Clementine, perhaps? They had no father, well, a biological father, but to them, to their mother, Frost, he was nothing more than a number and a false description.

To Jarod, he was much more. He knew differently, because he was the father, he was their father. Jarod; no reliable last name given. He was their father, the sperm donor who'd helped conceive of the twins, Nansen and Clem Frost; they were his children: he was a father!

The woman in the yellow dress, slight and shapeless, much as her dress, waited for him at the airport. The carpet underfoot was new, and Jarod thought that it still smelled of plastic, but his legs were tired – from lack of movement, aboard the aeroplane – and other parts of him could also have been tired, his sense of smell, his mind. His shoes, black, laced, something an office worker might wear to work, made shuffling noises on the carpet, though he wasn't shuffling, wasn't dragging his feet.

They did not linger at the airport, but immediately proceeded to the parking lot where Frost's car was waiting, an orange four-door, sporting new, silver hubcaps with the logo of the car's brand. They pulled in, later, after navigating midday traffic, to a shopping mall. Frost had some things to pick up before she picked the kids up early from school; they had an early knock off, it was Parent-Teacher Night.

Jarod followed her through artificially lit supermarket aisles, lined with items in bright, colourful packaging made of plastic or paper, occasionally aluminium foil or the metal used to make tin cans. Nansen and Clem were both well-behaved children, Nansen a high achiever at school, it was only Clem who suffered losing grades at school; it wasn't something that could be cured, it was just the way she was.

Frost produced a sequined purse and flipped it open to show the photograph she kept there of two children, her kids, the twins, and Jarod walked through the aisles, following the sound of her high heels falling on the laminated floor, his gaze upon the picture of _his two_ children, trapped beneath a glossy sheen.

Nansen: dark-haired like his father, and tanned, just – though, if he'd been kept indoors, Jarod imagined him pale, his tan almost unnoticeable, diminished – his hair neat, cut in a popular style, but free of gels or highlights; his smile genuine. And Clem: with her brother's and father's hair and tan, a large red blob over half of her nose and the greater part of her right cheek, colouring the bottom rim of her eye red, below one large, sleepy eye, its eye lid drooped, a twin to its perfectly unsleepy neighbour; her mouth unsmiling, as though not quite able to do so yet, to master the level of command over the muscles necessary, her hair just the way it was, brushed, but cut in no particular style. Nansen's eyes blue, not his mother's, but closer to Kyle's; Clem's a perfect colour match for Jarod's.

Jarod's attention stayed with the glaring photograph, projecting the store's artificial lighting right into his eyes – was that why they'd began to water? – until his feet carried him to a register, the first falsely bright, high sounds of the young cashier's voice causing him to lift his face quickly in alarm, and, when the last item had been scanned and added to the computerised tally up on the monitor, and Frost's hand reached for him, no, reached for her purse, confusion when the photograph was pulled from his sight, then, the card, and EFTPOS machine, and realisation.

The road bumped underneath the car, or rather, the car's suspension, and four tyres, bumped on the road's uneven surface, around corners, through street signs, traffic lights, and, finally, into a short driveway.

Jarod helped Frost carry the new shopping into the house, the thin plastic of the shopping bags cutting into his hands uncomfortably, though he made no complaints; the bags were put down in the kitchen. He watched Frost putting things away, things that had first woven their way into her life from off of a supermarket shelf, into her hand, warm skin, then a cold shopping trolley made of metal, then through a supermarket scanner, and into the same shopping trolley again, and into the back of her car. Now, they came out of their cocoon, one by one, with the sound of crackling plastic, and were packed away into new homes before Jarod's eyes, in Frost's warm hands. Jarod had never touched her hands – they'd not shaken hands upon meeting – but he thought, by the way she held the things she'd bought, carefully, that her hands must be warm, their skin soft and caring. Perhaps Clem had her skin, her skin exactly? Perhaps she'd missed out on her father's intelligence, but had gained her mother's gentle regard?

As the supermarket items found new homes, new hiding places, their bright, colourful packaging now pointless, useless, no talk was exchanged, or given, save for the voices of rustling plastic bags and doors opening and closing, and drawers sliding.

The shopping put away, it was a short trip back out to the orange car, then, once more, into the traffic, busy as ever. Jarod's heart beat faster at the realisation that Frost intended on his meeting the children – his children, _their_ children – and he frowned inwardly at the pain that the beating caused in his chest. Was the pain that he felt the same pain that his mother would feel when he finally found her, when his father had first found himself faced with him again, whole and alive, at least, outwardly? After the pain, would he feel happiness, joy, also? Should he feel such things for children he'd never known to have existed up 'til several days ago, less than one hundred hours ago?

Would the children feel abandoned by their father – by _him_? Would they resent him for that, for being absent? Or might they understand that their mother had given him no choice as to the matter ever being otherwise, that the Center had given either of them no choice? Would they think that he'd not wanted to know of them, and that their mother had not wanted to know of him? That they did not love each other, and that they, in turn, were unloved, could only be unloved?

But their mother did love them, and, Jarod realised, he loved them too.

Panicked, his heart beat faster still. Would they love him also? Would they know that he was their father, would Frost allow them to know? He glanced across to her, her small, warm hands clutching the steering wheel, and one brown-grey eye, one blue eye ahead, watching both the traffic and the road.

The car slowed, then turned, a bump, then the crunch of gravel beneath four tyres, and the car came to a standstill, parked in a small parking space, in the visitor parking lot of a high school; the school which Nansen and Clem attended five days a week, then Frost turned to him.

"That first moment I heard your voice, then when you told me your name, I knew that you were real," Frost's chapped-lipped mouth told him, multicoloured eyes intent upon his face, upon brown eyes. "I knew that you were genuine." The eyes lost their focus for a moment, as it had merely slipped away, then returned. She went on, "The night before, I'd read Clem a new book that I'd bought for her at the mall, it was a treat before bedtime, Nansen was there too, and I'd gotten to the end, when the character learnt that the letter in the mail, with the strange man's name on it, was for his father, and that the name was his father's, who'd died in the war, before he'd been born, and Clem looked at her purple pig and told it, told us, I presume, that her father wasn't dead, that he'd never been to war, and that his name was Jarod, with an 'o', not an 'e'." Frost blinked slowly, and her hand found the door handle.

_With an 'o', not an 'e'_, Jarod thought, as he walked into the school building, and through halls, toward the reception desk where Frost needed to go to hand in a form.

"Oh, Ms. Frost, I was sure you'd not be able to make the interviews tonight," the thin receptionist's equally thin voice reached across the grey desk, into their ears. "You must have worked extra hard to fix up that crisis at work! Your brother was just in to pick up the children."

Surprised, Frost said, "I don't have-"

Jarod fled the reception area, recalling the car they'd passed on the way into the visitor parking area – Frost had stopped to allow it right of way; he'd hardly noticed, though – nondescript other than that it was black and kept in good condition, recalled, the pain in his chest, now thudding, knowing that he should have been paying attention – he _always_ paid attention to the other road users, usually – that he should have known right away; that he was already too late.

The children were gone.


End file.
